Two Princeton tennis doubles pairs — senior Alan Kam with sophomore Evan Wen, and sophomore Bella Chhiv with first-year Pearlie Zhang — returned from West Philadelphia on Sunday as Ivy League Individual champions.
“I think [the win] helps set the tone going into the spring season. Everything we do in fall — the individual competitions, tournaments, and training — is to help us put our best foot forward by January,” Chhiv wrote to The Daily Princetonian.
As opposed to the usual team format of Ivy Championships, Individual Championships involve each school sending four players of each gender to compete in the singles draw. Those players then pair up and form two teams to compete in the doubles draw.
“Competing for the Princeton name and representing our team, despite it being an individual competition, is always in our mind,” Chhiv explained.
On the men’s side, Head Coach Billy Pate sent senior Alan Kam, sophomore Evan Wen, sophomore Aleksandar Mitric, and first-year Milan Markovits. Hot off of a weekend at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Regionals, a few top-seeded Tigers like sophomore Paul Inchauspe were absent from the draw. On the women’s side, sophomore Alice Ferlito, junior Eva Elbaz, sophomore Bella Chhiv, and first-year Pearlie Zhang entered the draw as a mix of singles and doubles specialists.
Though the autumn Ivy Individual Championships do not yield a team champion like the Ivy Team Championships held in the spring, the stakes remain high. Winners of each draw qualify for the ITA Conference Masters tournament, an opportunity to compete against the best of each conference and qualify for the NCAA Championships.
Each singles and doubles draw is populated by up to four singles players and two doubles teams from each Ivy school, leading to traditional single-elimination brackets of 32 and 16 respectively. Singles are played in the traditional best-of-three sets format, but doubles are played in an eight-game pro set format until the finals.
On Friday, action began in the opening rounds of the men’s singles and doubles draws with some success for the Tigers. Markovits, Wen, and Kam all advanced out of the first round of singles. On the doubles court, Wen and Kam closed out their Brown opponents 8–7 in a tiebreak, foreshadowing their clutch success for the rest of the tournament.
“We kind of love the tiebreaks, the pressure is fun,” Wen said to the ‘Prince.’ “Alan just kept telling me, ‘We’re not losing this, we’re not losing this,’ and we always came back to figure it out.”
The momentum continued into Saturday when the women took the court. Ferlito was the only Tiger to escape the singles sets, though her success would end on the doubles side with Elbaz later that day in a fatigued third match of the day 8–6 against Cornell. However, Chhiv and Zhang took revenge and a semifinal spot in the same scoreline against a different Big Red pair.
Back on the men’s side, Saturday only saw the pair of Wen and Kam take the court, closing out the Big Red 8–6.
“In the second round, we were down a break and it didn’t look good,” Wen continued. “But then we were able to turn it around.”
In the semifinals that afternoon, the Tigers had another tough matchup against Harvard’s Valdemar Pape and Mitchell Lee, but Wen and Kam had no problem breaking their serve and dispatching the Crimson 8–3 to clinch a finals berth.
On championship Sunday, Ferlito, Wen, and Kam all took the singles court in the semifinals looking for an ITA Masters berth. Ferlito fell 6–4, 6–4 to Yale’s Shyla Aggarwal, who had cruised through the draw until that point. Aggarwal would go on to win the championship in an all-Yale final.
On the men’s side, Wen and Kam were lined up on opposite sides of the semifinals with a potential Tiger on Tiger final in the works. However, Kam couldn’t get a foot in the door against Dartmouth’s Carlos Guerrero Alvarez in a 6–3, 6–2 loss, while Wen had a tough matchup against Cornell’s Felipe Pinzon, who was 13–1 in dual singles matches last year. Wen stole the second set, but it wasn’t quite enough. He conceded a 6–2, 2–6, 6–4 loss, ending the Princeton men’s singles hopes.
However, doubles were where Princeton would shine, sweeping both spots. On the men’s side, Wen and Kam dropped the first set to the Yale pair of Vignesh Gogineni and Jason Shuler by a score of 6–3. The match almost seemed out of reach when they went down a break in the second.
“We got broken to go down 4–2, and then something clicked,” Wen said. “We just started playing so much better. I just decided to stop missing, and he played so much better, and everything just turned around.”
They rallied to force a tiebreak in the second set. Their clutch play from the weekend continued when they won the breaker 10–8. Tied at one set apiece, the pair headed to a match tiebreak. The pressure play from Wen and Kam took hold once again as a 10–5 tiebreak propelled the Tiger pair to win the men’s doubles draw for their first major tournament victory together.
Wen and Kam wrapped up a very successful weekend with the win, each going 5–1 at the tournament.
“I think after Regionals and the way we’ve been playing — because we played a bunch last year — I thought we were definitely a favorite going in. I thought I had a good shot at singles, too.” Wen said.
The Tigers’ doubles magic continued for Zhang and Chhiv as well. Playing a strong Yale pair that included Aggarwal, the pair dominated the first set 6–2 and closed out the match in a much tighter second-set tiebreak.
“I think our doubles match in the semifinal against Yale was a turning point for us. We won the first set and in the second set, our opponents changed their game plan,” Chhiv said. “And with those changes, we had to make some adjustments ourselves … We learned a lot about ourselves as a doubles pair which gave us a lot of confidence going into the finals.”
Taking on a formidable Cornell pair in the final, Zhang and Chhiv came out incredibly strong, having their way in the opening set and taking it 6–0. They never let their opponents recover, closing out the second set 7–5 and completing the doubles sweep for Princeton.
Their win shows the success of a new pairing, as Chhiv played with Maia Sung ’24 last year and Zhang is playing collegiate doubles for the first time.
“Pearlie and I have very aggressive game styles and we complement each other really well. In doubles, it’s important to maintain an aggressive mindset and to be in control,” Chhiv continued. “And with Pearlie being an aggressive player herself, it comes naturally for us to do so. We clicked fast, and it’s so fun being on court with her.”
Along with Wen and Kam, the pair will later be tested at the ITA Conference Masters, where a top-three finish would put either in the NCAA Championships — a huge accomplishment for any Princeton player.
“It doesn’t matter how we do it, we’re just trying to be one of those three teams that qualified.” Wen concluded.
Tate Hutchins is an associate Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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